Find Your Caffeine Comfort Zone

Make your cups o' Joe count—without overdoing it

Your car needs power, and so do you. Why are we so responsive to caffeine? It comes from coco beans, making it au naturale, says Laura Klein, Ph.D., an associate professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State. Your body likes that, and your conscious brain likes that fact that caffeine blocks receptors that make you sleepy, she says. Caffeine also releases hormones that keep you active, increasing your heart rate and blood pressure. But no one likes the burnout. Here’s how to stay alert behind the wheel without a caffeine crash.

Know Your LimitJust like alcohol, your body builds a tolerance with caffeine. “If you’re a habitual coffee drinker, it’ll take more to gain the same benefit when you’re actually trying to,” says Dr. Klein. She worked with Penn State researchers to develop the Caffeine Zone, an iPhone app that acts as your caffeine odometer. After you drink coffee or an energy drink, enter it in your iPhone and a counter will decrease at the same rate your liver metabolizes caffeine. Now you’ll know the effects will wear off and you can fall asleep.

Can the energy shotsIt only takes your body about 10 minutes to feel the effects of caffeine, Dr. Klein says. But to avoid burnout, deploy your caffeine injections strategically and steadily. Coffee and tea still work best. While energy shots might double (or triple, or quadruple) your doses, the burnout will be worse, she says. “It’s like downing two shots or sipping two glasses of wine,” she says. “You wouldn’t chug two cups of coffee—so why down an energy shot?” Too much caffeine can leave you feeling anxious and lead to nausea, she says.

Trick Your BrainIf you’re worried about not being able to fall sleep, try switching decaf on the road. When British researchers had daily coffee drinkers drink decaf coffee after telling them it was regular, they performed just as well on puzzles and reaction time tests as the group who drank regular coffee, according to a 2011 study published in Appetite. Why? We’ve conditioned ourselves into thinking that drinking coffee will give us that boost, Dr. Klein says. That’s why simply smelling coffee can wake you up in the morning.